Review · OCT 3, 2026
QZB return to Critical with Dreams To Dust
In brief
The duo's second album lands as CRITLP023 on 2 October, three years after Future Forever, with vocals cut in their own room this time.
Dreams To Dust is out now on Critical as CRITLP023, released 2 October. It is QZB's second album and their first since Future Forever, which Critical put out three years ago. The label's own framing for the record is blunt: a decade-deep friendship pushed to breaking point.
The Bandcamp listing opens with Deux, then Last Breath with Rue More, Juniper, Diamonds with Sydney Bryce, Polymer, Into The Dark with SOLAH, an interlude, Surface Tension and Colder At The Peak with Duskee. Beatport's credits for the release also list Charli Brix, Marea and HAPPY JAY among the personnel. That is a lot of vocal real estate for a pair whose reputation was built on sound design, and it is the clearest structural difference from the debut.
The process changed as well. Speaking to UKF, the duo explained that where Future Forever was assembled with collaborators working remotely, the vocals here were tracked in their own studio, and they took control of the record's visual presentation rather than handing it off. Ben's line to UKF — "We are very emotional people, and tried to incorporate all of these feelings" — reads less as press-release sentiment than as a statement of method, given how much of the tracklist is built around a named voice rather than a lead.
The format
Critical has pressed it as a double 12" gatefold on transparent vinyl, available through the Critical Music Bandcamp alongside the digital. The album sits in a strong run for the label — Sabre's Big Cat EP, Sully's Flux / Chatter and En:vy's Love Talk / Boss Fight are all stacked near it on the same Bandcamp page — but an LP catalogue number is still a rarity at Critical, and CRITLP023 is the weight the label has chosen to put behind it.
What is worth watching is how the record functions outside an album listen. QZB's Critical history has always been dancefloor-first, and a tracklist with seven featured vocalists is a different proposition for DJs than a run of tool-grade rollers. Surface Tension and Polymer are the two titles on the list without a credited guest, which makes them the obvious first ports of call for anyone approaching this from the club side.
Hear it at qzbmusic.bandcamp.com.